


a lifetime’s a short time (when love never ends)

by dixiehellcat



Series: Tony Stark Bingo Round 4 [12]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Aging, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Dementia, F/M, Grief/Mourning, I'm Sorry, Implied Suicidal Actions, with all that implies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-12 12:53:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29135856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dixiehellcat/pseuds/dixiehellcat
Summary: Years have taken a lot from Pepper, and in the waning of her life, even her memories begin to fall away.Fills the "Whump" square on my Round 4 Tony Stark Bingo card number 4028, because I am assured that emotional whump counts just as much as physical. (required info collected below)
Relationships: Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Series: Tony Stark Bingo Round 4 [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2009245
Comments: 19
Kudos: 27
Collections: Tony Stark Bingo Mark IV





	a lifetime’s a short time (when love never ends)

**Author's Note:**

> If you have concerns about the tags, please skip straight to the bottom, I'll explain in the end note, and you can decide if you want to read.
> 
> Bingo specifics:  
> Title: a lifetime’s a short time (when love never ends)  
> Author: deehellcat  
> Card Number: 4028  
> Link (AO3, Tumblr, etc.) https://archiveofourown.org/works/29135856  
> Square Filled (Letter AND number AND prompt) A2, whump  
> Ship/Main Pairing: Pepperony  
> Rating (Gen, Teen, Mature, Explicit) teen for themes of aging, death and grief  
> Major Tags/Warnings/Triggers: Canonical Character Death, Dementia, Grief, Aging, Avengers Endgame compliant, with all that implies, I'm Sorry, Implied Suicidal Actions  
> Summary: Years have taken a lot from Pepper, and in the waning of her life, even her memories begin to fall away.  
> Word Count: 2101

“Do you know when Tony’s coming home?” Pepper asked.

Morgan’s hands paused in the middle of cutting a sandwich in half. “He said he might be tied up in town all day, mom. You know how his crew in R&D are.”

“Do I ever,” Pepper chuckled, tossed her grey braid over her shoulder, and wandered over to the kitchen counter beside her daughter. “I thought he might be back by lunchtime,” she added. “You’re certainly making enough for a superhero.”

“Benjy and his family are coming over.” Pepper frowned. “Benjy, mom, Peter’s oldest son.”

“Oh yes,” Pepper nodded. “Of course. Is he still with that nice girl he was dating?”

“Yes, mom, he and Sharice got married last spring, remember? We were there.”

Pepper sighed. “I’m surprised anybody wants to come to visit a forgetful old woman like me.”

“Oh, mom.” Morgan wiped mustard off her fingers onto the dishtowel, and patted Pepper’s soft, wrinkled cheek. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’ll be ninety your next birthday, after all. I’d say you’re entitled to forget a few things. Besides, you have FRIDAY to help you keep track.”

“I’m always good for that, boss lady,” Fri chimed in. 

Benjy and Sharice and their new baby arrived. Pepper made much of the cute little thing, and seemed pleased she managed to keep up with the conversation with only a few incidents of needing to be reminded of things. After they left, Morgan cleaned up while Pepper sat on the porch and gazed out at the lake. “I miss him,” she said when Morgan went out to join her. 

Morgan blinked, and her shoulders relaxed a bit. “I do too, mom,” she said in relief. 

They sat in companionable quiet for a little while, before Pepper said, “Well, he’ll be home soon, he has something brewing in that workshop of his.” She gestured toward the garage, its wood exterior weathered and silver grey with age. “Fri wouldn’t let me in when I walked down there while you were finishing the dishes. She won’t say, but I suspect he’s making something for me.” 

She tapped her watch, and FRIDAY piped up, “I am sworn to secrecy, boss lady.” 

Pepper leaned in, and her voice dropped. “He’s threatened for years to make me a suit, you know. I told Fri, she doesn’t have to break a promise, but if she could put a little bug in his ear and remind him that blue is my favorite color, I wouldn’t take that badly.”

She did not see Morgan’s eyes grow wet with tears, only the smile that the daughter she only sometimes recognized managed. “He knows, mom. He knows. Come on, it looks like rain’s moving in. I’ll get you your heart meds, and then, it seems like a good afternoon for a little nap.”

After she got her mother settled, Morgan sat alone on the stairs that held faint memories of her tiny self, watching her dad work. “FRIDAY?” she said softly. “I never thank you enough for all your help with mom.”

“It is…not my pleasure, I suppose, but my honor.” The AI’s voice was equally low. “I think I understand now why humans weep,” she admitted after a moment. “Seeing her like this, losing her memories in bits and pieces, is painful. I’m so tempted, sometimes, to try to set her straight, but then I remember, people with dementia can’t cross easily from their world to ours. It’s easier for us to go to them, for a while, since we can return to consensus reality, than to distress them by trying to pull them along with us.”

“And we never even had to program you to learn that,” Morgan laughed a little. “You’re something else, Fri. Dad…he must have been even more amazing than people say, more than I can remember, to be able to create you.”

“Boss was amazing,” FRIDAY affirmed. “I miss him too.”

It was a day like most days now, some forty years and a little more since the Blip, since the father Morgan barely knew had sacrificed his everything to save the universe for everyone else. The extended family Pepper had built around herself and her daughter over the years now pulled together to care for her. As hard as it was, they all had learned the arts of therapeutic fibbing and redirection, and learned to shift and be flexible depending on what Pepper remembered at any given moment. When she asked where Tony was, Peter might say, _he’s meeting with Fury, and you know how Fury is, they could be there all day_ , before asking her advice on some matter at Stark Industries. If she remembered Rescue and wanted to take it out for a little spin, FRIDAY, who was as good a white liar as any of them, told her: _boss has your suit broken down for repairs. I’m sorry, I’m sure he will have it set to rights soon. Until then, did you ever finish that gardening book you were reading? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the new designs of compost bins_. Even the smallest members did their parts; Morgan’s youngest daughter was her spitting image, and had learned to answer to her mom’s name when her nana called her by it.

Despite not being blood kin, the family worked as one. Morgan and her husband, a kind and bright fellow, ran the business end of SI. Peter, Ned Leeds and Harley Keener ran the labs with the help of several senior scientists who had been young bucks in R&D during the last years of Tony’s life, and were steadfast in maintaining his legacy in all areas. Peter still spidered around, but more of his time outside work and family was spent mentoring the next generation of Avengers. He said he wanted to pass on the care Tony had shown to him as a nervous superpowered teenager, and from all accounts, he did it well.

Pepper was the center of the hearts of them all, the center of their world. Other than her age-weakened heart, her physical health was generally good; she could usually get around without even needing a cane, which sometimes was a positive and sometimes was not, but she had never (yet) become agitated for more than a moment or two. The key, her doctors always reminded them all, was to make sure she always knew that she was safe and loved. 

Trusted caregiving staff took shifts to be with her around the clock, plus FRIDAY was installed in the watch she never took off (because she insisted it had been a gift from Tony, and he would have a fit if he saw her without it) to track her if worse came to worse. She never wandered, though. On her better days, she knew better; on her fuzzier ones, she would say she didn’t want to be far away when Tony got home, because he would worry, as he always did.

One evening, after her usual early supper, the sitter helped Pepper lie down for a nap, and she woke with her mind crystal clear. She knew the names of every person in every photo on her bureau, when she had last seen them, how and what they were doing, which ones were alive and which were not. She went downstairs and found the caregiver munching chips and reading on a tablet. “Hello there!" he greeted her. "Refreshed, are we? Do you have plans for this evening, Mrs. Stark? Tea and a book, maybe? Or we could share some popcorn and watch a movie.”

“I’d like to walk outside and get a breath of fresh air,” Pepper said reflectively. “You don’t have to come—you know I won’t go far, and FRIDAY is with me.”

She walked to the garage with assured steps, and asked FRIDAY to let her in. “I’m not sure boss would—” the AI began.

“Fri,” Pepper said firmly. “I remember, honey. I remember everything, and I know Tony isn’t coming home. Please, let me in.”

The door opened, and she stepped inside. Nothing had been disturbed, that she could tell anyway, since the bots had been moved out after Tony's memorial, to go live at SI. She remembered how confused DUM-E had been, how Rhodey had wept trying to explain to them that their daddy wasn’t coming back this time; their little artificial brains had come to take it for granted that Tony could dodge every bullet. “What’s today’s date, Fri?” she asked, and when told, figured backward, how long it had been since Rhodey’s funeral. Pepper still wasn’t sure she believed in an afterlife, but if it existed, she was positive those two reunited were driving the angelic hosts to distraction.

She walked around, touched everything, looked at everything, and managed to hold herself together, until her eyes fell on the empty maintenance bay in the wall that had held the suit Tony had died in. The sight struck her like a punch to the chest, and she dropped to the floor in front of it and cried as she had not for years. “Dammit,” she growled. “I don’t even remember, sometimes, that he’s gone. Damn you, brain. He deserves for me to remember how he—he died.”

“Maybe,” FRIDAY offered, “maybe I’m not the right one to say this, but boss loved you with every element of his being. I think I’m safe in conjecturing that he would not wish for you to be angry with yourself for something you can’t do anything about.”

“I’ll forget again, though,” Pepper whispered. “In a minute, or an hour, the fog will suck me back in.” She pulled up her knees and sat with her grief for a while, until a small start brought her back to awareness. _Old woman, nearly fell asleep sitting on the floor,_ she scolded herself, and got up, standing more easily than she had expected her aged limbs and joints to allow. A few steps to the side took her to the bay where Rescue stood. “Open this, please, Fri.” The clear door swooshed open, and she laid her hand on the cool blue metal. Tony knew, all right. 

Her fingers still remembered how to open the suit, and she stepped up and into it. Closing around her, it felt like a hug from him. She stepped out the back door of the garage, where Tony had once had the trees cleared for a takeoff/landing spot. The tall branches had grown back in, but that didn’t really matter, if the trip one was planning was only one-way. In her comms, she heard FRIDAY speak, but shut it off. As she had said, she remembered everything, including her personal override codes that nobody had ever thought to delete. 

She took off, soaring higher, and higher and higher, thinking of a story Tony had told her about his first flight in the Mark 2 Iron Man, how he had chased the moon up and up until the old suit had frozen over. The air grew thin, and she gasped briefly before calm came over her and she breathed easier. In fact, everything came easier; she moved with grace unfelt since her youth, since the first and last time she had fought in Rescue, with Tony by her side. She paused, suspended in space, and looked up at the stars in the dark sky and down at the earth, so far below now that she could make out the curve of the planet.

Something caught her attention, out of the corner of her eye: a light rushing toward her. Pepper laughed as she recognized the red and gold flash that swept in a grandiose arc around her. A familiar, beloved voice sounded in her helmet: _I’ve missed dancing with you, Potts._

_Same here_ , she replied, and when Iron Man hovered in front of her she could imagine Tony’s mischievous smile behind its mask. _I’m out of practice though._

_Let’s make up for lost time then_ , he said before shooting upward. Pepper smiled and followed the streak into the heavens.

The sitter finished reading his article and eating his chips, then went to the door to look for his charge. He didn’t see Mrs. Stark, but spotted the garage door hanging open and hurried down to walk her back. The Rescue suit stood undisturbed in its niche, behind dusty glass. Pepper was slumped on the floor, facing the empty Iron Man bay, with tear streaks on her cheeks, and a small smile like a kiss on her breathless lips.

**Author's Note:**

> First and foremost, to those skipping from the top before reading: this story deals with Pepper's old age and encroaching dementia. There is a point late in the story where she has a period of lucidity, and is so angry at her brain failing her that she appears to take action that could be read as suicidal (spoiler alert, it isn't). If that's not for you, go in peace. {{hug}}  
> :  
> :  
> :  
> Now, for y'all who made it through: Yep, I finally went there and wrote a fully Endgame-canon-compliant fic. (passes tissues) I read jelly_pies’ heart-tugging take on a canon post-Endgame Pepper, Dancing From Now On (https://archiveofourown.org/works/29035230) and after I cried over that, my bitch of a brain went Hold my beer. 
> 
> Notice, though, that I did still manage to wring a…happy? Hopeful? Satisfying? ending out of it, because hello, I am me. (Seriously though, thank you jelly. After spending years in the real-life nightmare of dementia while caring for my mom, I figured I would never ever feel able to write anything that dealt with it, so being attacked by an idea and being able to complete it was a blessing.)
> 
> Title from an epically tragic old country song called Forever Lovers that I heard a lot as a kid.


End file.
